The shadows and light of being real

The Artist's Way is a book I would recommend to anyone who's engaged in any sort of creative endeavor. I first picked it up a couple of years ago, and here is where I have to make a confession. I read the whole book, but I never completed all the exercises in it. It's a twelve week program, and I made to the week about abundance and prosperity before letting it drop to the margins of my activities. That week hit some uncomfortable places, and I'll admit I chickened out.

The impact that the other weeks made on me though is something that I didn't forget, and I eventually screwed up the courage to return to the book. Last summer, I picked it up again and started with great intent on week one. The house gremlins decided that was not to be, and my copy disappeared. It resurfaced in December, and I've been wanting to do this again. I started morning pages, one of the daily exercises, last week, and began to work my way through the preface and introduction again. Having less time to read than I've had in a long time, I just completed re-reading Chapter One last night, and the exercises await.

One of the things that the author discusses is how creative people who don't fully embrace their creativity often become "shadow artists," living their lives in the shadow of their talent or on the fringes of the field. Would be movie directors become critics. Would be painters become artist's agents. Writers work in fields like advertising. They seek the company of people they see as real artists. It really made me think about how much of my life that I have lived in the shadows.

Despite some published poems many years ago, I shied away from the world of professional writing. I was badly burned years ago when with my newly minted journalism degree in hand I didn't get a job in my field within what I felt was a reasonable time frame. (Oh, I wish I'd known then what I know about job hunting now.) It seems that so much of my life since those rejections has been about coming up with a decent plan B, C, D, etc. I basically felt like I wasn't really good enough to try to make it as a professional writer, and somewhere, something in me said that if I couldn't make a living as a writer, I wasn't a real writer. The other side of this is that in other jobs, I often felt like a fraud because my passion wasn't there. I felt like I was pretending to be something I wasn't.

Now, the saner part of me knows that's a crock, but that feeling was there for a long time, and it never quit driving me. Though my poetry and fiction went underground, I eventually screwed up the courage to use my writing skills in marketing, training and fundraising. Having the validation of an income from my writing, even if it wasn't the writing that I really wanted to do, gave me the courage to think of myself as a real writer again and to hope, if not yet believe, that my writing could be worth something. This has meant getting to the point where I have to recognize that my writing's value is not what it puts on the table, but what it contributes to my life. I'm hoping that it contributes to the people who read it as well.

I'm still left with the tension of wondering if I'm a real writer. It's not the lack of income from writing that drives this fear, and I can't yet define exactly what it is. I just know that I want to step out of the shadows, but part of me still fears what the light will reveal. I expect the exercises I'll be doing in The Artist's Way will touch more nerves. I already feel more open which is exciting and more vulnerable which is scary. Theresa of Theresa Williams-Author [Exile Edition] wrote recently about change and growth. I know that I've been going through changes, and right now I believe that they have been paving the way for growth.

That's the main reason I'm returning to this book. I feel that it holds some great tools for growth. It's the reason I finally committed to joining a new church. It's the reason I'm working on my financial and organization skills. I've let life carry me for awhile and press its changes on me. I feel like I've got my feet planted now, and even though I'm still somewhat shaky, I can sort of see a direction where I want my life to go, and it's very real.


writing
The Artist's Way